Vishy, The Original Little Master, Turns Sixty

Gundappa Vishwanath turned sixty yesterday. Suddenly I realised that I am following Cricket since last forty years. It was during the Diwali vacations of 1969 that I was introduced to running commentary by one of my college going cousins. I still remember the noisy celebrations by my cousin and his friends when Vishy scored his first Hundred on debut in the Kanpur Test. I was too young to understand the entire commentary but the coverage in local papers next day made me realize that Vishwanath had done something special. He became my first childhood hero.

I, as indeed many of young Cricket lovers in the seventies, particularly from nondescript towns in India, never got to see Vishy live on ground or on TV as his career terminated prematurely in 1981, well before the advent of live TV coverage. But the vivid narrations by Suresh Saraiyya, Anant Setalwad, Vijay Merchant, Tony Cozier etc during the commentary and equally glowing match reports by K.N.Parbhu and Bal Pandit and V.V.Karmarkar ( in Marathi papers) were enough for me to believe that Vishy is truly an all time great Cricketer.

All through his career, Vishy had to live in the shadow of Sunny Gavaskar. In Sunny’s debut series against West Indies in 1971, Vishwanath was injured for first three tests. Sunny stole the limelight then and forever. But the die-hard followers of the game know the value of Vishy’s presence in the team with a very brittle middle order and his contribution in all the landmark wins India had posted all through the Seventies. People talk of Laxman’s double century against Australia in 2001 as the best Innings by an Indian. But I am sure that those who watched or even listened to the commentary would rate Vishy’s counterattacking innings of 97 not out (against a rampaging Andy Roberts on Chepauk in fourth Test against West Indies in 1974-75) ahead of everything.

His polite and unassuming nature on and off the field is talked of very highly. Although with a very shrewd Cricketing brain, his selfless and gentle character might have come in the way to be given captaincy. In the only test he captained, that too when Sunny volunteered to rest, Vishy had put forth the greatest ever example of sportsmanship by recalling a batsman, Bob Taylor of England, given out by the umpire when the opposition was precariously placed. It is impossible to think of such gesture being offered by the likes of Ricky Ponting, Ganguly, or even Sunny Gavaskar. He perhaps was the last gentleman on a Cricket field.

One of the striking features of his batting was that he used to score at a fairly decent pace. His wristy play would have been ideal in the middle overs of One day Cricket, but he hardly got to feature in it. His career ended abruptly after his failure against Imran’s XIII that included partisan umpires. We just witnessed a lot of media support for Ganguly or Dravid in spite of a long sequence of failures. But in 1981, nobody, not even Sunny Gavaskar, his greatest admirer, stood for Vishwanath’s comeback. Never a man of manipulative means, Vishy preferred to walk into oblivion. But he continues to rule the hearts of Cricket lovers of that generation never mind the exploits of Sachin, Dravid or Sehwag.

BCCI has recently decided to honour Vishy with the Life Time achievement award. It is a happy coincidence that it comes close to his sixtieth birthday. Vishy truly deserves this and much more.